The Dismal Swamp Canal
BY DAVID WALBERT
Figure 1. This map shows the Dismal Swamp Canal and its feeder canals in
1867. Zoom in to get a closer look at the full map.
Copyright ©2009 LEARN NC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/. The
original web-based version, with enhanced functionality and related resources, can be found at
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4462.
Figure 3. The wetlands of
northeastern North Carolina
made transportation difficult.
Transportation in northeastern North Carolina was difficult in the eighteenth century, and
residents of the Albemarle region had no easy way to get their produce to northern or
European markets. Roads north into Virginia were primitive and required travel through
swampy land. Travel by water meant heading down one of the region’s rivers into the
Albemarle Sound, past Roanoke Island into Pamlico Sound and from there to one of the
inlets through the Outer Banks and out into the Atlantic — a long, dangerous, and
expensive trip.
In 1786, commissioners from Virginia and North Carolina met to study the possibility
of a canal that would join Albemarle Sound to Chesapeake Bay. They agreed that their
states should cooperate to build the canal, and that citizens of either state should have
access to the rivers of the other. (The idea that North Carolinians should be able to travel on
Virginia’s rivers, and vice-versa, seems obvious now, but before the U.S. Constitution took
effect in 1788, “citizens” of each state didn’t necessarily have full rights in other states!)
Four years later, the legislatures of the two states established the Dismal Swamp Canal
Company, which would be responsible for building the canal. George Washington, who
owned land in the region and hoped to develop it, agreed that the project was feasible and
bought $500 in the company’s stock, which gave the project credibility.
The plan was to connect the Pasquotank River in North Carolina, which flowed into
the Albemarle Sound, with the Elizabeth River in Virginia, which empties into the
Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads near Norfolk and Portsmouth. A second canal would
connect to Lake Drummond, so that water from the lake could be used to fill the canals
during dry weather. People who owned land near the canal, meanwhile, could dig ditches
into the main canal to drain the land and make farming possible. At 32 feet wide and 8 feet
deep, the canal would carry only flatboats — shallow boats or barges that were little more
than rafts for carrying cargo on rivers — but that would be enough to let the residents of
northeastern North Carolinia get their produce and lumber to market. Tolls would pay for
maintenance of the canal, as well as of a road running alongside it.
A causeway road — which today is U.S. Route 17 — opened in 1790, and construction
began on the canal in 1793. The company hoped to finish the canal within ten years, but by
1796 they had run out of money with only part of the canal completed at either end. The
company built a road to connect the two portions of the canal, and so for several years,
goods were carried by barge partway north or south, then transferred to wagons in the
middle and back onto barges for the rest of the trip by water. The full canal opened to
traffic in 1805. But it carried mainly logs, shingles, and other wood products from the
swamp’s forests — not the great regional trade route originally envisioned by farmers and
merchants.
In 1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin conceived the idea of an inland
waterway from Massachusetts to Georgia that would allow protected north-south
transportation and avoid the need to travel on the open ocean. The waterway would consist
of rivers (many of which would have to be deepened or widened), bays, inlets, and canals.
His plan didn’t find much support until the British blockaded the U.S. coastline during the
War of 1812. Most people and politicians at that time had been opposed to the national
government building roads, but the difficulty of transportation during the war made it a
matter of national defense. With funding from Congress, a feeder canal was built
connecting the Dismal Swamp to the Northwest River and Currituck Sound. But it would
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Figure 4. The Dismal Swamp
Canal today.
be more than a hundred years before Gallatin’s dream of a full intracoastal waterway would
be realized.
As use of the canal grew, it had to be deepened and widened to accommodate boats
that could navigate the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. With more money from the federal
government, the entire canal was rebuilt. Over time, more locks were added — bringing
the number from two to five — and new stone locks replaced the old wooden ones. By
1828, the Dismal Swamp Canal averaged 40 feet wide and could accommodate larger boats.
Even so, passage was slow. The stone locks frequently broke, and boats might have to wait
for days while the locks were repaired. In 1859, the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal
opened, and this new route — which provided faster and more reliable transportation for
larger vessels — took away most of the Dismal Swamp Canal’s traffic.
In the 1890s, the Dismal Swamp canal was rebuilt again, this time with only two locks,
and for a time it again carried commercial cargo. But in 1913 the federal government
bought the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal as part of the new toll-free Intracoastal
Waterway. The Dismal Swamp Canal couldn’t compete, and in 1929, it too was purchased
by the federal government and added to the Intracoastal Waterway. Today, the Atlantic
Intracoastal Waterway — made up of rivers, inland bays, inlets, and canals maintained by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — provides a protected inland channel for recreational
boaters and commercial shippers from Norfolk, Virginia, all the way to Miami, Florida.
George Washington and the Great Dismal Swamp
In the 1760s, George Washington and other Virginians formed a company called Adventurers for
Draining the Dismal Swamp. Because the Great Dismal Swamp is a pocosin, a kind of wetland that is
actually higher in elevation than the surrounding land, it could be easily drained. Washington and
some of his partners were interested in building a canal that would allow boat traffic between the
Chesapeake and the Albemarle, and the Virginia General Assembly authorized them to construct
canals through private land, but they were not able to complete the project before the Revolution.
Figure 2. Today, the Dismal
Swamp Canal is part of the
Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
On the web
The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway
http://www.nao.usace.army.mil/Technical%20Services/Operations%20Branch/
atlantic%20intracoastal%20waterway/homepage.asp
History, navigation information, and maps from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which
maintains the Intracoastal Waterway.
Other nineteenth-century canals
http://www.historync.org/canals.htm
Several other canals were built or attempted in North Carolina in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
The Roanoke Canal Museum and Trail
http://www.roanokecanal.com/
The website of the Roanoke Canal Museum in Halifax County offers a video about the history of
the canal and its importance to the region.
The Dismal Swamp Canal | 3
How a canal lock works
http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/nature/how/canal-lock.asp
An animation from Haworth Village in England shows how the locks of a canal raise and lower
water level to let ships move up and down stream.
George Washington and the Great Dismal Swamp
http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/feb06/swamp.html
History and manuscripts from the Library of Congress.
More from LEARN NC
Visit us on the web at www.learnnc.org to learn more about topics related to this article,
including Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, Dismal Swamp Canal, North Carolina, canals, history,
rivers, and transportation.
About the author
D A V I D WA LB E R T
David Walbert is Editorial and Web Director for LEARN NC in the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill School of Education. He is responsible for all of LEARN NC's educational publications,
oversees development of various web applications including LEARN NC's website and content
management systems, and is the organization's primary web, information, and visual designer. He
has worked with LEARN NC since August 1997.
David holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author
of Garden Spot: Lancaster County, the Old Order Amish, and the Selling of Rural America, published in
2002 by Oxford University Press. With LEARN NC, he has written numerous articles for K–12
teachers on topics such as historical education, visual literacy, writing instruction, and technology
integration.
Image credits
More information about these images and higher-resolution files are linked from the original web
version of this document.
Figure 1 (page 1)
Map by D. S. Walton, published by Hosford & Sons. This image is believed to be in the public
domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment.
Figure 2 (page 3)
Map by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This image is believed to be in the public domain.
Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment.
Figure 3 (page 2)
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/csb555/309835045/. This image is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.
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Figure 4 (page 3)
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/larrymac/631859485/. This image is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 License. To view a
copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.
The Dismal Swamp Canal | 5